Boundary Labeling in a Circular Orbit

Boundary labeling is a well-known method for displaying short textual labels for a set of point features in a figure alongside the boundary of that figure. Labels and their corresponding points are connected via crossing-free leaders. We propose orbital boundary labeling as a new variant of the problem, in which (i) the figure is enclosed by a circular contour and (ii) the labels are placed as disjoint circular arcs in an annulus-shaped orbit around the contour. The algorithmic objective is to compute an orbital boundary labeling with the minimum total leader length. We identify several parameters that define the corresponding problem space: two leader types (straight or orbital-radial), label size and order, presence of candidate label positions, and constraints on where a leader attaches to its label. Our results provide polynomial-time algorithms for many variants and NP-hardness for others, using a variety of geometric and combinatorial insights.